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chu_totoroHigh school is such a... transient thing. People come, people leave. Every year a batch of newcomers rush in the fill the void of the batch that left, and it continues this way, year after year, until eventually everyone who was once there has been replaced, the way every cell in our body is replaced in 7 years only gradually so you barely notice at all but it is still changing, constantly changing.
Maybe it's just because for so long I've remained static. Clung to routine. 9 years in the same school, that's a long time. People come, people go, of course. It's a school. But the changes are tiny, imperceptible. People within the same grade. Ten here, five here, the grade levels are so bloody small, you learn all the new people's names within the first week or two and you know the names of everyone else already and you spend another year with the same people, the very same, the ones that you spent the year past and the year before that with, and nothing changes, not really. Even if in five years a number of people have gone and other people have replaced them, you don't notice, because those other people, you've known them since they came - three years, four years ago, and it's been long enough that they're a part of the norm and it doesn't matter.
And it's all in the same grade. Everything stays in the same grade, pretty much. The same grade moves with you, up and up and up, and the same people stay beside you and rise with you, up and up. Same friends, really. Everything's just so small. Everybody knows everybody else and the groups form and they stick, like glue, and don't come off. I mean, they change, they do. Of course. But in a sense, nothing really ever changes at all. For one, there are always the people who have been there since the beginning, who have gone in with you and grown up with you and they really don't leave, I've left but some of them are still there now, from K-12 and god forbid Harker get a university because then they'll go to that too.
Also, part of it was just me. I wasn't interested in stepping outside my group. I wasn't Shirley, who got immensely interested in boys come 5th-6th grade and flirted with as many of them as possible. I wasn't Carolyn who left and came back again and knew about the transience of things and floated about making friends and preparing for the time when everyone would leave. I was the kid who sat with her friends at the exact same table, exact same spot in fact, every single lunch period without fail. I was the kid who talked to the same people in the morning, at lunch, and afterschool and it's not like I didn't talk to other people, I mean, and my people shifted from year to year but whoever they were I always stuck to them. It was a routine.
I was the kid at home that hated formal occasions and even simple things like going out to watch a movie. I was the kid glued to the computer screen and simply... not interested in what my family has to say or what my family considers fun. There's school, and there's tag, and there's friends. And then there's home and the computer. Homework is usually finished afterschool while waiting to be picked up.
Good lord I sound like a bloody introvert. But I was really loud around my friends. Does that count?
Maybe I am an introvert. And an extrovert. At the same time. I took a test once and it said I was both. Maybe it just means I'm adaptable? I took a test for sleeping once too, and I wasn't an owl (night person) or a lark (morning person). I was a hummingbird, which means I could adapt to either one (apparently hummingbirds have weird sleep schedules?) at will.
mmmm but - I don't know. K-8. I lived K-8 like that. Now imagine plucking me out and throwing me directly into high school. Good thing I had CTY to prepare me. Dang I miss CTY.
It's a 180 degree reversal, basically. I float, now. I'm a floater. Like a bit of seaweed broken off from its original patch and sloshing around with the waves, sticking for a short while here and a short while there but never really staying with anything. Think about it. How can you make new friends and stick to them, really stick to them, when all of the old stuff, not just a little bit, but everything is peeled away and they give you new people, fresh people to make friends with and if you never grew up with them and never taken their presence for granted, like the air you breathe they're all pretty much the same, then. New people. No group, no static, no permanence. Also high school is a lot bigger than middle school (and to compound that, every school is bigger than Harker) so there are a lot more people to meet and a lot more tendency of overlapping groups and such.
And I'm so used to it now. You go somewhere, you meet new people, they stick around, sometimes a month, sometimes two months, sometimes a year, sometimes three years, and then they leave and you never see them again or you do and they become an acquaintance. Another person you know, somehow, through something. It goes so easily, so fast. CTY 04 was just barely an initiation, it was pretty much one more of so many camps I went to during my mindless zombie years K-8 and met some people and left and forgot them all. CTY 05 was different, because everyone was there and it was split-off time. Then there was Saratoga, and the seniors you barely meet and leave almost before you can begin to remember them, even with the help of Australia, and then next year's seniors come and go and SJYS comes and goes and Europe comes and goes and Holland comes and goes and it's snap snap snap! People! One year, two years, one week, three weeks, gone! Some stay on, a tentative communication that sometimes snaps and sometimes turns permanent, usually there's some but from the two weeks, three weeks, a lot of times nobody lasts and everyone turns into acquaintances, names you know, people you've met, blahblahblah.
I'm so completely accustomed to it, so quickly (or maybe not since I'm going to be a senior and it's been a long way since freshman year), that it doesn't even hurt anymore. Oh, it does, a little, but it doesn't hurt hurt. Not the sharp, tearing pain and the black depression that almost tore me to pieces at the thought of leaving CTY that year. But that wasn't just new people, it also meant the end of a life and the start of a new one and leaving people I've known for at least 3-5 years, and scarier, leaving the static permanence of something you've been in for for 9 years behind, and honestly, after that, nothing's quite as bad. It's not "hurt" anymore. It's melancholy sometimes, and wistful others, and sometimes fleeting resignation, but not much more than that. Like CamTrad, when WeiYun bawled her heart out for hours and started being depressed days before it actually ended and I couldn't muster up more than a halfhearted sadness on the plane. Or CPYO, everyone going on about how much they miss camp and me feeling mildly guilty for not really... well, missing it at all.
And now the sophomores (the grade above us - once senior now freshmen but I can't ever think of them as other than sophomores) are leaving and I can't muster up anything except this contemplation of the transience of things. How fast things move. There's not even enough emotion involved for it to be wistful anymore, just pensive.
I look at Stephanie's stars and the Sophie's World that she lent me and Vincent's pens and highlighters and all the other "standard stuff" he brought back for us from Taiwan and I can't manage more than a sort of hollowness. A void. But pain, whatever, all that drained out a long time ago. I'll miss these people more than I ever missed the juniors (class of '07) or the seniors (class of '06) because I connected with them, they really were friends and just friends, not with that factor of awe that coupled my tentative friendships with the seniors which really corrupts all the makings of true friendship (the juniors I just didn't hang out with as much - I had some good friends there but not as many, and I had less time with them), out of all the grade levels these are probably safest to say the people I hung out with most, excuse my floating, but in a way I also won't miss them as much as the other classes, or perhaps the better word is mourn them as much, because... I'm so accustomed to people coming and going, now.
mmm I don't really know what the point of that was. I felt a bit hollow, I suppose, and I wrote it all down and I still feel... well, hollow. I remember when I used to get all angry or all sad or just all passionate over something, and I'd write and write until I'd written it all out of me and I was left hollow and clean and could go to bed, and now I start out hollow and end hollow. Maybe I'm just a vat of thin nothing, maybe if a wind blew it would blow right through me and no one would notice.
Going to cut this nonsense and go sleep now.
edit: I guess what I was trying to say was, I wish when I hug people and tell them I'll miss them I could actually, actually mean it, but I don't because I know I won't miss them, not really. And I did, once upon a time. I was in black, black depression when CTY '05 ended and the heck, before it ended, and we had our gatherings and every time it ended I would have post gathering depression and maybe this is tied into Delnut too, and all the romantic stuff and whatever it's all tangled together but in the end it held together and I don't even get post gathering depression anymore because I know we'll have more gatherings and that's that.
And now I don't miss people when I say I will and I wish I could.
Maybe it's just because for so long I've remained static. Clung to routine. 9 years in the same school, that's a long time. People come, people go, of course. It's a school. But the changes are tiny, imperceptible. People within the same grade. Ten here, five here, the grade levels are so bloody small, you learn all the new people's names within the first week or two and you know the names of everyone else already and you spend another year with the same people, the very same, the ones that you spent the year past and the year before that with, and nothing changes, not really. Even if in five years a number of people have gone and other people have replaced them, you don't notice, because those other people, you've known them since they came - three years, four years ago, and it's been long enough that they're a part of the norm and it doesn't matter.
And it's all in the same grade. Everything stays in the same grade, pretty much. The same grade moves with you, up and up and up, and the same people stay beside you and rise with you, up and up. Same friends, really. Everything's just so small. Everybody knows everybody else and the groups form and they stick, like glue, and don't come off. I mean, they change, they do. Of course. But in a sense, nothing really ever changes at all. For one, there are always the people who have been there since the beginning, who have gone in with you and grown up with you and they really don't leave, I've left but some of them are still there now, from K-12 and god forbid Harker get a university because then they'll go to that too.
Also, part of it was just me. I wasn't interested in stepping outside my group. I wasn't Shirley, who got immensely interested in boys come 5th-6th grade and flirted with as many of them as possible. I wasn't Carolyn who left and came back again and knew about the transience of things and floated about making friends and preparing for the time when everyone would leave. I was the kid who sat with her friends at the exact same table, exact same spot in fact, every single lunch period without fail. I was the kid who talked to the same people in the morning, at lunch, and afterschool and it's not like I didn't talk to other people, I mean, and my people shifted from year to year but whoever they were I always stuck to them. It was a routine.
I was the kid at home that hated formal occasions and even simple things like going out to watch a movie. I was the kid glued to the computer screen and simply... not interested in what my family has to say or what my family considers fun. There's school, and there's tag, and there's friends. And then there's home and the computer. Homework is usually finished afterschool while waiting to be picked up.
Good lord I sound like a bloody introvert. But I was really loud around my friends. Does that count?
Maybe I am an introvert. And an extrovert. At the same time. I took a test once and it said I was both. Maybe it just means I'm adaptable? I took a test for sleeping once too, and I wasn't an owl (night person) or a lark (morning person). I was a hummingbird, which means I could adapt to either one (apparently hummingbirds have weird sleep schedules?) at will.
mmmm but - I don't know. K-8. I lived K-8 like that. Now imagine plucking me out and throwing me directly into high school. Good thing I had CTY to prepare me. Dang I miss CTY.
It's a 180 degree reversal, basically. I float, now. I'm a floater. Like a bit of seaweed broken off from its original patch and sloshing around with the waves, sticking for a short while here and a short while there but never really staying with anything. Think about it. How can you make new friends and stick to them, really stick to them, when all of the old stuff, not just a little bit, but everything is peeled away and they give you new people, fresh people to make friends with and if you never grew up with them and never taken their presence for granted, like the air you breathe they're all pretty much the same, then. New people. No group, no static, no permanence. Also high school is a lot bigger than middle school (and to compound that, every school is bigger than Harker) so there are a lot more people to meet and a lot more tendency of overlapping groups and such.
And I'm so used to it now. You go somewhere, you meet new people, they stick around, sometimes a month, sometimes two months, sometimes a year, sometimes three years, and then they leave and you never see them again or you do and they become an acquaintance. Another person you know, somehow, through something. It goes so easily, so fast. CTY 04 was just barely an initiation, it was pretty much one more of so many camps I went to during my mindless zombie years K-8 and met some people and left and forgot them all. CTY 05 was different, because everyone was there and it was split-off time. Then there was Saratoga, and the seniors you barely meet and leave almost before you can begin to remember them, even with the help of Australia, and then next year's seniors come and go and SJYS comes and goes and Europe comes and goes and Holland comes and goes and it's snap snap snap! People! One year, two years, one week, three weeks, gone! Some stay on, a tentative communication that sometimes snaps and sometimes turns permanent, usually there's some but from the two weeks, three weeks, a lot of times nobody lasts and everyone turns into acquaintances, names you know, people you've met, blahblahblah.
I'm so completely accustomed to it, so quickly (or maybe not since I'm going to be a senior and it's been a long way since freshman year), that it doesn't even hurt anymore. Oh, it does, a little, but it doesn't hurt hurt. Not the sharp, tearing pain and the black depression that almost tore me to pieces at the thought of leaving CTY that year. But that wasn't just new people, it also meant the end of a life and the start of a new one and leaving people I've known for at least 3-5 years, and scarier, leaving the static permanence of something you've been in for for 9 years behind, and honestly, after that, nothing's quite as bad. It's not "hurt" anymore. It's melancholy sometimes, and wistful others, and sometimes fleeting resignation, but not much more than that. Like CamTrad, when WeiYun bawled her heart out for hours and started being depressed days before it actually ended and I couldn't muster up more than a halfhearted sadness on the plane. Or CPYO, everyone going on about how much they miss camp and me feeling mildly guilty for not really... well, missing it at all.
And now the sophomores (the grade above us - once senior now freshmen but I can't ever think of them as other than sophomores) are leaving and I can't muster up anything except this contemplation of the transience of things. How fast things move. There's not even enough emotion involved for it to be wistful anymore, just pensive.
I look at Stephanie's stars and the Sophie's World that she lent me and Vincent's pens and highlighters and all the other "standard stuff" he brought back for us from Taiwan and I can't manage more than a sort of hollowness. A void. But pain, whatever, all that drained out a long time ago. I'll miss these people more than I ever missed the juniors (class of '07) or the seniors (class of '06) because I connected with them, they really were friends and just friends, not with that factor of awe that coupled my tentative friendships with the seniors which really corrupts all the makings of true friendship (the juniors I just didn't hang out with as much - I had some good friends there but not as many, and I had less time with them), out of all the grade levels these are probably safest to say the people I hung out with most, excuse my floating, but in a way I also won't miss them as much as the other classes, or perhaps the better word is mourn them as much, because... I'm so accustomed to people coming and going, now.
mmm I don't really know what the point of that was. I felt a bit hollow, I suppose, and I wrote it all down and I still feel... well, hollow. I remember when I used to get all angry or all sad or just all passionate over something, and I'd write and write until I'd written it all out of me and I was left hollow and clean and could go to bed, and now I start out hollow and end hollow. Maybe I'm just a vat of thin nothing, maybe if a wind blew it would blow right through me and no one would notice.
Going to cut this nonsense and go sleep now.
edit: I guess what I was trying to say was, I wish when I hug people and tell them I'll miss them I could actually, actually mean it, but I don't because I know I won't miss them, not really. And I did, once upon a time. I was in black, black depression when CTY '05 ended and the heck, before it ended, and we had our gatherings and every time it ended I would have post gathering depression and maybe this is tied into Delnut too, and all the romantic stuff and whatever it's all tangled together but in the end it held together and I don't even get post gathering depression anymore because I know we'll have more gatherings and that's that.
And now I don't miss people when I say I will and I wish I could.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 05:15 pm (UTC)I know change is hard, especially from the way you're coming at. You having never really known anything other than Harker for a huge portion of your life, I can just imagine how difficult it must be. I'm not saying change should necessarily be embraced, but one must learn to accept it. It doesn't exactly seem like you've learned to accept change in your life completely; you say you don't mind it anymore when friends move on, yet you cite that it doesn't hurt as much as it used to. Maybe you've only bottled up the pain instead of learning to accept it.
Well, sorry if this turned into lecture >>;
I just want you to know that friends and the bonds you share with them are not nearly as fragile as you think they are and the memories you've made will live on...
no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 06:00 pm (UTC)/fails at explanations
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 08:12 pm (UTC)WEED PEACE PLANE HAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA
lmao
no subject
Date: 2008-08-20 10:56 pm (UTC)Hmm. How do I put it?
I think it's all a personal thing? How much you miss someone, and how much you're going to care if or when they're gone.
So don't feel bad about not missing people.
In fact missing people sucks.
I'd say a bit more, but bleh. Beautifully written entry, by the way.
P.S: HOW BIG IS HARKER? Because there are about 50 people in my year, which would make it even smaller than Harker, I think.
I win. =D
P.P.S: Another thing is, the more you experience something, the more you're numbed to the emotional turmoil. I've never left anyone behind before, at least not people I lived with and connected with, while you've been to millions of camps if I'm correct. Whereas if someone told me to, say, "stop being such a bloody emotional idiot", it wouldn't hurt anymore because about 18293712361270 people have told me that already.
Just some thoughts. ^^
*hugs anyway*
no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 08:05 pm (UTC)I think when I went there there were ~150 people in my year? Maybe 200. But that's still small enough for you to know everyone by name, especially if you've been going since Kindergarten and the people don't change much from year to year.
Yeahhhh. You made me think like - hey, that's what I felt like when I had to leave CTY! ... too bad I don't feel anything now. _ _;;
*HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGLOMP*
go read some Maya! and after that go read some Sam Storyteller. and after that-
:3
no subject
Date: 2008-08-23 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-21 08:05 pm (UTC)LOL TYPO MUCH